Group pushes business-led mission trips

A partnership of Sioux Falls businesses is trying to make it easier for employers to connect their morals and missions with international service.

The Dispatch Project, formed in early 2012, has gained more than one dozen corporate partners supporting its faith-based goal to support service work overseas.

Since it was founded, more than 50 members of the Sioux Falls business community have participated in trips to the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Haiti.

Co-founder Heath Oberloh, a partner in Lindquist & Vennum LLP, said the Dispatch Project is “a way to get business owners excited about mission trips and service projects, and to help give them a way to express their faith in a tangible way and get their employees involved in these types of projects.”

Three years ago, Oberloh’s co-founder, Paul Ten Haken, didn’t think traveling overseas for a service trip was his thing, but he went to the Dominican Republic with a church group anyway.

“I really had to get my arm twisted to go on that. To be totally honest, I really didn’t want to go, but I just kind of felt like I should go,” said Ten Haken, the founder of digital marketing firm Click Rain Inc. “I came back from that trip with a real kind of changed perspective on a lot of things, but one of those things was on business and what businesspeople are doing and business leaders are doing to try to get involved in service work.”

Oberloh and Ten Haken read “Hole in Our Gospel,” a first-hand story about a successful CEO who quit his job to help the poor and less fortunate overseas. It motivated them to form the Dispatch Project.

“That kind of spurred some discussion between us on what we do in response to reading a book like that,” Oberloh said. In February 2012, Ten Haken, Oberloh and seven others went to the Dominican Republic for the Dispatch Project’s first trip.

Removing obstacles

The Dispatch Project encourages employers to sponsor their employees by paying for the travel costs, which typically range from $1,500 to $2,000, and allowing time off without using vacation leave.

“We’re trying to remove the two biggest barriers that people have to service work: ‘I don’t want to use all my vacation, or I don’t have enough money,’ ” Ten Haken said. “If businesses can help employees with those two big obstacles, there are a ton of people who would love to participate in these sorts of things.”

This arrangement is mutually beneficial, Ten Haken said. Sponsoring an employee is a charitable contribution for the employer and shows commitment to the staff member. Employees have a unique experience that can have a positive effect on their work life.

“Sending an employee on a service trip is an opportunity for the business to kind of walk the talk in terms of their values and morals and things that they maybe preach,” Ten Haken said.

The group focuses on finding people to send and raising money for a specific project, such as funding the construction of a school on the group’s latest trip to Haiti in April. An upcoming trip in February will help build a house for a pastor, his wife and five children who live in a 10-foot-long shack.

The Dispatch Project partners with third-party nonprofits to get the money and the people to the proper place.

“It’s not really just swinging a hammer because there’s lots of people who can do that there. The local Haitian people built the school, which is perfect because you created jobs there for them,” Ten Haken said. “We really have to look at how we can create jobs and use our blessings, both financially and with our business acumen, to help these people with their daily struggles that they may encounter.”

Positive experiences

Peppermint Energy CEO Brian Gramm and president Chris Maxwell went to Haiti with the Dispatch Project in April. The company manufactures and sells portable solar-powered generators that are marketed as having many applications, including use in developing countries.

“We were set up and structured specifically to have one foot in traditional business and one foot in that kind of helping community, making the world a better place,” Gramm said.

Peppermint Energy, with the help of the Pierre Rotary Club and individuals in the Sioux Falls area, donated some of its generators to help local Haitians start their own businesses, including a cinema house that plays DVDs and television programs as well as a cellphone charging station.

“Everyone has a cellphone, but no one has electricity. People can pay money and sit there and wait for their cellphone to charge,” Gramm said. “It’s a small business that’s not too complex, and a good way to learn, get your feet wet and earn a living.”

For Peppermint Energy executives, helping others start their own businesses also helps shape their own.

“There was firsthand learning we were getting in Haiti,” Gramm said. “From the time we entered Haiti to the time we left, our model for how we were going to help developing countries changed and shifted.”

Jen Schaefer, director of human resources at DocuTap, went to Jamaica in September, where she washed the feet of deaf children and gave them shoes. Schaefer said she had a renewed appreciation for her own life, “that my kids can get to school each day, that they have clothes to wear and shoes on their feet. It’s just an opportunity that most children have here that is always taken for granted,” she said.

DocuTap sent two employees to the Dominican Republic in February, and CEO Eric McDonald said it’s a goal to have one of its clients go in the future.

“When you give money, it goes in a direction and it will be impactful, but I think that when you’re sending employees, the impact is even larger,” McDonald said. “You think about the energy, the excitement, the passion and the opportunity you give an employee, and that fire is going to burn within them for years. That becomes infectious, and it touches other lives.”

Oberloh said that sending employees, rather than only money, has benefits for both employers and employees.

“The mentality of being a servant can have a big impact in a workplace environment. It’s not all about advancement or living the dream; it’s about serving and that can have an appropriate place in a business world, too. If you’re not serving your customers appropriately, you’re not going to be successful,” he said. “A lot things people experience on these trips I think makes them better employees and better people, and that’s good for the business and good for the community.”

Gramm said any company can be both successful and mission-driven.

“You can do both. That’s something that speaks to the success of the Dispatch Project. There’s more awareness of that as a result of the Dispatch Project,” Gramm said. “It’s not an either-or, a one-or-the-other. It truly can be both.”